All Who Hear It
by Laraqua
Summary: Linear time no longer exists in Silent Hill.  Those who try to escape it merely find themselves at the beginning again.  An endless loop of pain and suffering.


A drunken card game that had gone on for far too long. A bad loser leaning over Michael with a cloud of bad breath. Pointing fingers, harsh comments, confusion. The game was over in a flurry of cards and a knocked over table. A hasty return to a two-bit hotel room. His night was in fragments, shattered by an alcohol-fuelled haze. He was on the bed, a line of drool running from lip to pillow.

---------------------

Michael's forehead hurt from the pressure of the round, hard object jammed against his face. He blinked blearily against the light of day and leaned back in his seat, a belt across him, strapped from shoulder to waist. He raises a hand to shield his face, his hang over raising sparks of pain in his mind. His pillow had been his steering wheel.

"How did I get in my car?"

He looked to the right at a plain, leather book that sat on the passenger seat and the kitten that crouched beneath the dashboard.

"A cat?"

He looked out the cracked windshield at the grey light that penetrates the thick fog. The sky was grey. The horizon lost in the fog-shrouded trees that his car faces towards. Through the left and right window he can see the road stretching around the cliffs and a set of tyre marks to the right that seem to end where the rear of his car began.

"Silent Hill? Am I here ... all ready? Did I drive here drunk?"

Michael rubbed his forehead, confused, and as his hand passes over his eyes, he almost expects to see his hotel room when he can see again. Instead, merely for foggy forest. He had a job as a mechanic here but he hadn't expected to get here for at least another day. Then he remembered all the boxes he had packed. The trailer his car was pulling. The bags in the back and passenger seat. His head whipped around, scanning the interior of the car.

Empty.

He frowned. The kitten meowed. He looked over and across into the rear view mirror. No trailer. He looked back out the rear window. No trailer.

"Those damn gamblers! They robbed me." He turned the ignition key on his car, ready to turn his car around and drive back, but the key didn't start the engine.

Michael opened the car door, undid his seat belt and tried to stand. The world tilted crazily this way and that as he stood. He gripped the door until it passed. Finally the world settled down into its usual shapes and an ache began to hammer in his head.

He stumbled forward to the bonnet, his eyes on the bonnet, his heart rising to his throat as he hoped dearly that the problem would be easy. The bastards had probably stolen all of his tools as well. As he pops the bonnet and begins to rise it, he gets the uneasy sense of there being someone behind him. Slowly, nervously, he looks over his right shoulder.

A woman stood unsteadily a few feet away, her eyes closed, her head tilted to one side as though listening to some song. A trickle of blood ran down her face from a gash in her head, from her right nostril and from the right corner of her lip. Long brown curls have coiled around twigs and leaves, her arms and legs are bruised and dirty, her skirt short and black, her powder blue jacket and shirt revealed a little too much, having been somewhat yanked down so that part of her bra was exposed.

"Hello?" Michael asked. Not sure of what else to say.

"Unh!"

Then he noticed a spot where a person had lain, the undergrowth crushed beneath a weight, and saw that she stood before the car. Had he swerved to hit her? Could he have been that drunk, his eyes had followed her and then his car? He knew that when tired, the car would often drift to where the eyes were focused. No, surely not. He couldn't have been driving the car. He knew not to drive drunk. He had enough experience of that.

"Miss? Would you like to sit down, miss?"

"Huh?" Her eyes popped open. Dark eyes, the pupils barely visible. She squinted at him in confusion and pain. "Who ... who are you?" 

"Michael. Michael Talis."

She looked around, moving her head in small little jerks and wincing each time. "Sure."

"Are you all right, miss?"

"It hurts." She looked down at herself, tugging up her shirt to better cover herself. "Trees? Cliffs? This doesn't look like Miami." She slumped forward.

He caught her shortly before she would have hit the ground. Kneeling, holding her, he wondered why she felt so cold. Then he realised that everything was cold. Even his own arms were unpleasant to the touch.

She scrambled out of his arms. "Wait! Wh-what are you doing to me? What happened? Who're you? How'd you get here?"

"I drove."

"From where?" she demanded, sounding almost offended at the principle.

"That way," he said, pointing in the direction the skid marks started. He didn't want to admit that he had no idea how he had gotten here. "Silent Hill would be that way."

"A hill?" she asked. "You're driving toward a hill? Why? Who lives on the hill?"

"No, it's a town, I think," he said, rubbing his forehead again. "You look hurt."

The kitten meowed piteously. It had climbed onto the dashboard and was tapping at the cracked windshield with its paws. The windshield hadn't been cracked yesterday. There hadn't been a cat in his car, either. He went into the car and reached for the kitten. It was a grey tabby, its fur fluffed up in the cold. It immediately started nuzzling his hand and purring. He decided to call it Samantha and assume it was a girl. That was what everyone did, wasn't it? Assume cats were girls and dogs were boys unless told otherwise?

"I can't remember how I got here," she said. "I'm Alice. Alice Dawson." She looked around. "Did you hit me with that car?" 

"How could I do that? You don't even know where you are. How could you have been walking across the road here?"

"I should call the police." She took out her mobile phone and dialled, then pressed her pink phone to her ear. "Hello? Hello? Weird... It's got enough bars on it. You'd think we had good enough reception and yet I could barely hear anyone talking. I bet those cliffs are in the way. Your car work?"

"No, it broke down. That's why I swerved." Which made sense so it had to be true. Michael decided that until proven otherwise, that must have been what happened. It provided him with a little relief.

"I guess we'll need to walk then, huh?" says Alice, motioning for him to lead the way before reaching down to pick up her handbag.

Michael sighed and started walking, too tired and hung over to want to ponder his situation. "I guess we do."


End file.
